Thing Number Eighteen - Panzanella

This Tuscan bread-based salad is similar in concept (and execution) to Fattoush, but the flavours here are very definitely Italian.

The salad is left to sit for a while once you've made it, so it's important that the bread isn't going to dissolve into squish - you want something that had a bit of presence about it even before it went stale.  I used half a Pain de Campagne that's been hanging around for a few days.

Chop it into chunks and stick it in a bowl.

Next you want some tomatoes (for which the usual rules apply - they should be good ones, that taste of something other than red water).  You need about the same quantity as bread, or a bit more.  Chop them up too, and add them to the mix.  (Some recipes ask you to peel and de-seed them, and then press the juice out of the seeds in order to then put it back into the salad.  There's seriously no way I'm doing that.  I just chopped the tomatoes into the bowl so I wouldn't lose any of the juice.)

Now you need about half a cucumber.  Given that it's going to be sitting and seeping in dressing for a while, I did go to the (minimal) effort of removing the skin and seeds, just because I don't want it going squishy.

Slice the cucumber into little jade-green crescent-moons, and add them to the bowl.

Finely slice up some red onion (I only used about half an onion, because it was massive), and add that, too.

I used a handy jam-jar to mix up the dressing - a large glug of extra virgin olive oil, a smaller glug of red wine vinegar, and generous pinches of salt and sugar.  Shake them together (with the lid on, obviously.  Bit messy otherwise) and pour over the salad.

Rinse off a teaspoon or so of capers (I used baby ones purely because they came in a smaller jar and I was already a bit laden down so I didn't want to have to carry anything bigger home) and chuck them in.

Now rip up a handful of basil, and add that, as well.

Mix the whole lot together, cover with clingfilm, and leave it to sit and soak up flavours for at least half an hour, and preferably longer - several hours is good.  (Don't put it in the fridge.  Tomatoes never taste of anything when they come out of the fridge.)

The verdict

I was convinced this wasn't going to work.  I kept tasting bits while I was adding it and thinking things like 'the bread's too tough' and 'it's too vinegary' and I wasn't really looking forward to eating it, to be honest.  And then I did, and it turns out that the time it spends sitting and resting is basically a final magic ingredient that makes it all work.  It's really nice.  (Which is a good job, really, since there's loads left and I'll be eating it for lunch tomorrow).  I'm maybe very slightly fonder of Fattoush, but only just...

Thing Number Seventeen - Doughnut Pie

So yesterday I fancied a doughnut, and because it was the end of the day, I ended up with a bag of five for 39p.  Two doughnuts in this seemed like less of a good idea, so today I'm left with three day-old doughnuts to use up - because they cost me 23.4p, dammit! - and no particular plan as to what to do with them.

I Googled 'stale doughnut recipes' for inspiration, and the consensus seemed to be doughnut bread pudding. And I can see how that would work, but everyone said to do it and that made me want to do something else, 'cos I'm just contrary like that.

And then I thought of doughnut pie.

It sounded ridiculous.  It sounded so-wrong-it's-right.  It sounded awesome.  So here we go...

Normally I'd make the pastry myself - the same way as for the mince pies - but it's a weeknight; and I'm making doughnut pie, which is hardly going to complain; and there was ready-rolled pastry in the reduced-to-clear fridge in the Co-Op.

Line a deep pie dish with the pastry, and prick the bottom with a fork.

I wanted to make sure the base wasn't soggy, so I blind baked it (i.e. baked it empty before putting in the filling).  You need to hold the pastry down while you do that or else it'll slump round the edges and rise up in the middle like a giant blister.  So line it with baking parchment and fill it either with real dried beans, or with baking beans (which are arguably better as they're ceramic so they conduct heat well).  Bake it like that for 15 minutes or so at about 180-200C, and then take out the beans and parchment and give it another five minutes.  You want it to be golden and dry, no squishiness left.

Meanwhile, make the pie filling.  I used about 400g rhubarb which I bought the other day because it was so pink and beautiful.  Chop it up, and stew it in the same way as the apples for the Apple Charlotte - add a sprinkling of sugar to sweeten it, and a teeny splish of water to get the ball rolling on cooking it, and simmer it gently until it disintegrates.

While both of those things are happening, make the pie topping.  Take the three doughnuts - which were jam ones, incidentally, though I'm sure anything would work - put them in a large, shallow bowl, and break them up with two forks like you're shredding crispy duck.

Beat together 90g sugar and two eggs...

...and then add 90g melted butter.

Pour this mixture over the doughnut bits, and mix well.

To put the whole pie together, first pour the rhubarb into the pie shell (I put foil strips round the outside as the edge of the crust was already brown and I didn't want it to burn when it went back in the oven).

Then add the doughnut mixture, dolloping it over the top fairly evenly.

Put the whole lot back in the oven for 30-45 minutes, until it's golden and all the topping has cooked through.

The verdict

I reckon this is a good first stab at this.  The pastry is a bit rubbish (that'll teach me not to be lazy!), but that's no reflection on the rest of it.  The topping is great - quite cake-y, actually quite bread pudding-y itself, crisp on top, and not showing any obvious signs of having been cobbled together from aged doughnuts.  The rhubarb itself is lovely, but it doesn't totally go with the topping.  What would really work, though, would be to skip the rhubarb and spread jam on the pastry base instead.  It would bring out the residual jamminess of the doughnuts, and it would fit the flavour of the topping - the rhubarb seems a bit like it's wandered in from some other pie and doesn't know quite what to do with itself.  Next ill-advised doughnut purchase, I'll try jam...

Thing Number Sixteen - Apple Charlotte

I have a vague memory of making something called Apple Charlotte in a school cookery lesson - a layered up affair of apple and sweetened breadcrumbs, a bit like a multi-storey crumble.  Looking it up now, though, I find that that dish is generally called Apple Brown Betty; whereas a Charlotte is more often a pudding made in a basin - lining it with bread and then turning it out when it's done.  (Wikipedia reckons that Charlotte (cake) is 'an icebox cake' but there's frankly no way I'd eat this without baking it, so yah-boo sucks to Wikipedia on that one.)

So, we'll come back to Betty another time, but this week let's try Charlotte.  (I am absolutely going to start inventing puddings and giving them women's names; it's apparently a thing).

I'm using the same large-ish pudding basin I used for the Christmas Pudding - whatever you use needs to be oven-proof, so if you don't have a suitable basin, use a small cake tin or something like that.  (You could theoretically make little individual puddings, but it would be an awful faff).

Start with the apples - I think I used about a kilo, but basically however many it takes to fill up the basin you're using will be about right.  I used a mixture of sharpish eating apples for texture (teeny Cox's that were cheap 'value' apples because they were so small), and cooking apples (which might baffle you if you aren't in the UK - we have specific apples for cooking with, generally Bramleys which are huge, very tart, and basically disintegrate into appley fluff almost as soon as you show them the heat.  If you don't have them where you are, don't worry; just use whatever.)

Peel, core and chop them.  (I cut the Cox's into little pieces, and the Bramleys into slightly larger ones.)  Mix the pieces up with the juice of a lemon as you go, to stop them from going brown.

Put the whole lot in a pan along with 3 tablespoons of sugar and 3 tablespoons of water.  Put it on a medium heat, with the lid off - you want any excess water to evaporate - and stir it around every couple of minutes to keep it from sticking, and to break up the apples.  (If you aren't using cooking apples you may need to be a bit more vigorous about this).

It's done when it's starting to turn to a puree but still has some apple pieces in it.  Check that it's sweet enough, and stir in a sprinkling of whatever spices you like with apples (I went with cloves, nutmeg, and mace).

Meanwhile, sort out the bread.  If it isn't already sliced, then slice it (I just used plastic bread, though).  White bread - or a variation on it like a brioche loaf or raisin bread or something - would work for this; I'm not sure I'd want to make it with brown.  Cut off the crusts (you can always make breadcrumbs out of them).  I think I used about ten slices altogether - it's a big pudding basin, and it was quite a small loaf.

Melt about 50g butter and use this to brush the bread slices.

Next, you want to arrange them, butter side out, so they line the basin.  You'll need to overlap them a bit to make this work, and you might need to cut bits off or add extra bits in places.  Just go with whatever works. If the bread's really dry, you may need to be a bit more heavy-handed with the butter to make it more flexible.

Dollop the apple mixture into the lined basin...

...and then top it off with a layer of bread, again with the butter facing out.

Put a piece of baking parchment on top, and sit a saucer on top of the pudding - find one that will fit neatly inside the top of the basin.

Weight it - by which I mean plonk whatever heavy things you have to hand on top of the saucer.  I used a storage jar and a tin of tomatoes, and then balanced a tub of baking beans on top for good measure.

Leave it like that for half an hour or so.  The point is to compact everything together and help squash all the bread against the sides of the basin so the whole lot will hold its shape.

Then remove the weights, saucer, and parchment; put a bit of foil over the top of the basin, and stick the whole thing in the oven.  I put it in at about 180C for an hour or so - there's nothing in it that needs cooking, so basically what you want is to let the bread turn golden.  (Remember that the sides will probably brown quicker than the layer of bread on top, because they're in direct contact with the sides of the basin and the basin will get hot.)

When it's done, turn it out onto a plate (sit the plate upside-down on top of the basin, hold the two together, and flip).  Mine turned out fine (although it did slump somewhat once I took a slice out of it).

Serve it with cream, or custard, or ice-cream, or whatever you think goes best.

The verdict

I'm in two minds about this.  On the one hand, it was pretty yummy.  (As soon as I ate the bit I served up for the photo, I went back for seconds.)  On the other hand, it was mostly yummy because stewed apples are yummy, and the effect isn't dissimilar to eating stewed apples with a side serving of toast; except that it's a lot more time consuming and faffy than making toast.

I'm not sure in what set of circumstances I'd plan to make it again - I'm trying to concoct some sort of scenario where I find myself with a houseful of guests, a desperate need for pudding (but not so desperate that I don't have two hours or so to spare before it's needed), and literally no ingredients other than bread and a sackload of apples to work with.  That isn't quite so far fetched as it sounds - I do sometimes have to invent pudding from the contents of friends' kitchens - but even taking that into account I'm not sure this is what I'd make.  It just all seems a bit of a song and dance.

So, mixed verdict on this one - it tastes great, but I think you could get basically the same taste for a lot less effort; and although the pudding-shape is fun, it's not so spectacular as to make the extra work worthwhile.

Thing Number Fifteen - Mazzamurru

This is basically an attempt at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's version of this Sardinian bread-and-tomato gratin.  Normally I'd scope out other versions of a recipe and combine together the best bits, but in this case I can't find many (the Winifred Pudding problem again), and most of the ones I did come across seemed to involve just layering up the ingredients, letting them soak, and eating them like that, which does rather play into my horror of squishy food.  (I did also come across this recipe, the ingredients for which call for 'fairies'.  Wasn't really sure where to begin with that, shopping-wise).  So, I'm pretty much doing what Hugh says.

Start by gently cooking some onion in a glug of olive oil until it's soft.  (This is a 'some' sort of recipe; quantities aren't desperately important.  For the curious, I used two small onions.)

Add a clove of finely chopped garlic and cook until that's had a chance to soften, too.

Sling in two tins of tomatoes...

...and add a bay leaf and some salt, pepper, and sugar.  (Again with the 'some'.  Add a pinch of each now, and then taste the sauce later to see whether it needs more of anything.  And yes, you do want sugar; it helps to bring out the flavour of the tomatoes.)

Let the sauce simmer gently for ten minutes or so - long enough for the tomatoes to lose that 'tinned' taste they have to begin with.

Meanwhile, prepare the bread.  You want probably a couple of hundred grams - I used about half of a small loaf.  This was one of those ones where the supermarket have sliced it bizarrely thinly; and actually those thin slices are quite good for this.  I cross-cut the slices into smaller bits, to make it easier to layer up later.

You also want some (yes, I know) cheese.  I've gone with a mixture - a ball of mozzarella, plus some grated pecorino and cheddar.  Go with what you like and have handy (as long as it isn't something that'll be totally bizarre with tomatoes.)

Once the sauce has had its simmer, spread half of it over the base of an oven-proof dish.

Then add a layer of half the bread (this is where triangular pieces come in handy for fitting everything together)...

...and sprinkle on a layer of half the cheese.  (It wouldn't hurt for each of these first halves to be the small half.)  Also drizzle on a bit of olive oil - I used the basil oil from crouton week, because it was there and because I thought the flavour would add something.

Now it's time for round two, building a second layer of each element using what's left.  Then stick the whole thing in a medium oven for twenty minutes to half an hour, 'til it's golden.

Hugh reckons to give it ten minutes after it comes out of the oven 'to settle', by which I take it he means to meld together a bit more and develop some structural integrity.

The verdict

I'm really in two minds on this.  The flavour is great, and the golden, cheese-encrusted top layer is - well, it's golden and cheese-encrusted.  What else does it need?

And then there's the bottom layer of bread.  Which is so so squishy.  I don't do squishy.  Maybe you do, in which case that won't bother you; personally, if I were doing this again, I'd be tempted to make it wider and shallower - a single layer rather than two - and then it would be pretty much perfect.

Thing Number Fourteen - Winifred Pudding

The oven is fixed!  And I'm celebrating by making Winifred Pudding.

I was introduced to this tart-type-thing at a charity bake sale at work this week, where we had to bake things making use of leftovers (because that's just how we roll).  It's a glorious name for a pudding, or indeed for anything.  If I ever marry a Mr Pudding, I'm absolutely calling our daughter Winifred.  The recipe was apparently thought up by Thomas Allinson, (he of flour and bread fame, which shows admirable pragmatism in relation to one's wares) a-hundred-and-change years ago.  No idea who Winifred was, though.

It's rather like treacle tart, only lemony instead of golden syrup-y.  I've pretty much used this recipe (though, in fact, all available recipes seem suspiciously similar, and all appear to be illustrated by the exact same photograph), with a few additions/alterations. 

'The' recipe calls for 'a slice' of bread to be made into breadcrumbs, which is rather unhelpful - whose slice, and from what loaf?  So, I've gone with 75g.  I shamelessly used white bread, because that's what I had in the house; though I'm sure Thomas Allinson is spinning in his wholegrain grave. 

Warm up 5tbsp of whole milk. (Actually, I only had skimmed in the house, so I used four of milk and one of some clotted cream that needed using up, just to even up the balance). 

Take it off the heat, and stir in the breadcrumbs.  Set on one side to cool. 

Butter and flour a 20cm pie plate (use the shallow, plate-y sort, not one with steep sides), and cut out a circle of puff pastry to fit.  I'm being lazy and using ready-made, ready-rolled pastry, which makes this utterly undemanding.

Press it down into the pie plate, making sure the edges of the pastry are arranged in such a way as to be able to puff up.

In a wholly unorthodox touch of my own (stemming partly from a suspicion about putting liquid pie-filling straight onto puff pastry - it has nowhere to puff, surely it'll just go squishy? - and partly from having a jar in the cupboard that needed to be put to some use or another) I smeared the pastry hollow with a few teaspoons of lemon curd. 

Cream together (i.e. mush with the back of a wooden spoon) 85g butter and 85g caster sugar.  (These seem like oddly specific quantities until you remember it's a Victorian recipe, and that's three ounces.) 

Beat in two eggs, one at a time. 

Then beat in the breadcrumb mixture.

Add the zest and juice of a lemon...

...and a teaspoon of lemon essence.  Beat everything together.

Pour the mixture into the pastry-lined plate, and put it into a preheated oven (180C) for half an hour.

Hoik it out, and sprinkle with a tablespoon of sugar (caster if it's all you have, but since the idea is to give it some crunch I've gone with demerara).  Then shove it back in for another 5-10 minutes.   Once it's cooked, serve it warm with cream (or whatever).

The verdict

I'm still not 100% convinced that it's a good idea to use puff pastry for a tart base, but I'm on the road to conversion.  The edges off the pastry puff up in a very satisfying way, and as long as you're careful to cook it hot enough, and for long enough, the base cooks through.  And the insides of this are very comforting in a nursery food sort of way - soft and sweet and with a little bit of crunch.